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By Scott Doggett, Contributor


California's air-quality authorities are an innovative bunch, and this month they took an unprecedented step toward making the Golden State less hazy by requiring automakers to place a reflective coating on the windshields of cars and trucks purchased in California.


The requirement is one of several that the California Air Resources Board has considered under its Cool Cars program, which is designed, as you likely guessed, to keep vehicles in the sunny state cooler.


By doing that, Californians won't need to use their vehicles' air conditioners as much, which will reduce the strain on automotive engines, which will decrease the speed with which we gobble up fossil fuels, which in turn will reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we release into the atmosphere.


We at Green Car Advisor first reported on the program in February, when CARB was focusing on having paint-makers tweak their automotive paints so they'd be more light reflective - as opposed to more light absorbing.


Light-absorbing paints, the king of which is black, contribute significantly to a vehicle's cabin temperature when parked in direct sunlight. Hot parked cars tend to cause their owners to reach for A-C controls the moment they enter their vehicles. Running the air conditioners adds to the workload of the vehicles, which in turn results in higher fuel consumption - you know the story.


The same is true with regard to windshields. When you consider at how much of the surface area of a car's sunny side consists of windshields, you can appreciate how important it is for the windshields to be sunlight-reflective to keep a vehicle's interior cool when parked in sunlight on a warm day.


The technology used by glass manufacturers to make more reflective car windows has been around for nearly 20 years, said Mukesh Rustagi, director of strategic product management at Pittsburgh Glass Works, the largest automotive glass supplier in North America.


The technology exists and it's not particularly costly compared to, say, wiping out entire species and watching the world's glaciers - water sources for more than a billion people - melt away.


With that in mind, California's air regulators voted unanimously last week for a mandate requiring automakers to include sun-reflecting glass on all vehicles sold within the state by 2014.
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Tags: Chrysler, Courts, Emissions, Ford, Fuel Economy, General Motors, Honda, Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, California Air Resources Board, CARB, Carbon Dioxide, Chrysler, Climate Change, Ford, Global Warming, Greenhouse Gases, Honda, Reflective Glass, Toyota

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California to Require Reflective Coating on Windshields to Reduce Climate Change was originally published by Green Car Advisor. Read the full story by clicking here.